My UX checklist
Essential UX questions you need to ask about your digital product
Functionality
✓ What are the number of available tasks/functions on any given screen? Too many? Too few?
✓ What is the point with this and that? Is all functionality properly explained, clear, self-evident or blurry, complex and confusing?
✓ Are there shortcut keys for advanced users, or a lot of mousing?
✓ Are save functions manual or automatic?
✓ Do the system remember inputs, helps complete forms, cookies?
✓ Are page/ widget modes stored to save time?
✓ What is the browser/device support?
✓ How is data delay handled, waiting for data extraction, loaders, spinners, progress bars, information while waiting?
✓ Are there social features? Do I feel alone in the system, or is there a community of other users who can help me and make suggestions, share experiences, rating and evaluations can be made?
✓ Are running widgets for help or annoyance? Lots of disturbing blinks and animations?
✓ What functions could be removed without losing core functionality?
✓ What’s the statistics for each user story? Is there live statistics? Popular recommendations? “Likes” — floating good content to the surface?
✓ How is data aggregation? Any dashboards? Need of any overview? Can I personalize my views?
Interaction design
✓ Are interactive elements clear? Buttons and links with consistent colors and shapes?
✓ What happens when I click this? Intuitive or confusing next screens?
✓ How do I find things? Browse, search, suggest, recommend, relate, synonyms, help?
✓ How is the flow between screens and functions? Next step is evident or confusing, must be learned, trained, acquired?
✓ Where do I start? Numerous ways to the goal? Clear paths? Help as you go?
✓ Did I push the wrong button? Error messages good or cryptic? Is there a felt “danger” I if click this or that? Can I destroy or delete something by accident?
✓ What’s the complexity rating of each screen?
✓ Are the right form-navigation elements chosen, drop down, check boxes, radio-buttons, sliders?
✓ Is there a consistency of flow, placement of buttons, OK/Cancel/Reset, next/previous?
✓ Are there consistent regions for placement of elements?
✓ Do ‘wizards’ store your step position, or forget, time-out and generally work against your intentions?
✓ Are ‘wizard’ steps clear? Can they be clicked as a navigation? What if you click them, do you lose data on the page you left?
Information architecture and content
✓ How does the interface communicate? Wording, terminology, information scent? Are you calling a spade a spade?
✓ Do I see signs leading in the wrong or undesired directions, or do I always get relevant navigation on my journey to my goal?
✓ Is the information model user/customer centric, or topic/system/organization centric? Is this about you, the user, or about us, the senders?
✓ How is the readability, scanability, focus-areas, bullets, illustrations? Is difficult language used to explain complex concepts?
✓ Is there a clear distinction between section/gallery pages versus article pages?
✓ Are road signs/navigation pages easy to make sense of?
✓ Are some navigation pages anemic? Little to no useful content? Just there because of the breadcrumb path?
✓ Are there hybrid pages? Pages that can’t decide whether they are road signs or destinations?
✓ Is there an FAQ — what are the most common questions and problems?
✓ What the quality of content in texts; titles, summaries, main body? Do texts still make sense, even out of their original context? Like in a search result or a promotion banner?
✓ Static or dynamic content, how often is there a change of page content to make the content more alive?
✓ Old and stale content vs. new and fresh, is there a date and time stamp for each page? Does it ever expire if not consumed?
✓ Navigation texts concise or blurry in their range of meanings? What’s in “About us” verses “Our business” or “Our products” versus “Our services”?
Graphic design
✓ Are functions and content prioritized using a clear visual hierarchy?
✓ How are the icons, imagery, symbols, metaphors, mental models behind the interface?
✓ Are brand guidelines correctly followed?
✓ How is the contrast and readability on any device? Text vs background, text sizes, weights, types, underline or link confusion?
✓ How is the geometry of the interface? Is there a clear grid? Mathematical symmetry? Consistent units and measurements?
✓ What’s the color palette? Any weighting of colors? Lines, directions, shapes are consistently used?
✓ How is the visual flow of the page, how are the eyes moving? What are the patterns of looking?
✓ What do I feel using the system? Happy, bored, concentrated on the task at hand or fighting the quirks of the system?
✓ How is the personality of the system, coming through design, animations and language?
✓ Is the visual design enhancing the content and improving the communication? Or is this visual connection to content and functionality random and arbitrary?
